Dissociation means not feeling your feelings. You teach yourself how to disconnect from them in several ways. Addiction helps to provide that disconnect. So to think about giving up the one thing that provides the relief of not feeling seems like insanity to the insane mind. How could I live without drinking is the desperate thinking of every soul addicted to alcohol.

Art Mowle who is in long-term recovery writes on his blog. Drinking for a Lifetime, about his experience helping a friend try to get sober. He titled his post, “Lose a Friend“. It helped him to remember how it was. In AA this is called “keeping it green”.

From his blog:

“I grieved and was heartbroken over the loss of alcohol. I grieved the loss of who I was when drinking actually did work. I grieved the fact that I now identified with a group of people that at one time I judged, at one time I swore I wasn’t one of them. I grieved that I would have to work hard at recovery because just abstaining from alcohol wasn’t going to be enough for me. I grieved the loss of a part of me.”

“I feared facing my life without a means to numb and hide from the hard times. I feared that alcoholism really was something that was out of my control. I feared that for me, there would be no turning back once I knew for sure and admitted that I was a true alcoholic.”

“All of this isn’t to say that there isn’t so much to be gained from sobriety. I have a beautiful, sober life now. But, I write this post for anyone who might think that their feelings of grief and sadness are wrong. You need to feel what you feel. And if you feel grief about getting sober, that’s okay. ”

“Shouldn’t I always feel happy now that I’m sober? Fear and grief are real feelings that we all feel. In my experience, having a spiritual connection has greatly reduced these feelings and I still turn to that connection every time I feel fear and grief come up. But, I remember in early sobriety, they were quite common feelings. ”

“So if you’re in those early days please believe me that all of your feelings are normal.”

“And that it does get better.”

If you, or someone you know, is thinking about quitting drinking, another blogger, Belle, has a 100 day challenge to quit. She calls her 5 day audio class, the Sober Jumpstart Class. The class includes:

1. This is a 5-part audio class. Every day for 5 days, you will receive a new audio message from me. Yes, my voice, it’s me talking.
2. The audio will be in an MP3 file, so you can download it and save it to your iPod to listen to it again if you like. Or listen while running.
3. Each day I’ll share with you my best ideas on the nitty-gritty bits of sobriety. So that’s every day for a 5 days, one new audio each day. The audios will be about 10-15 minutes long. I tend to tell stories, some episodes run a little longer.

Another blogger, Primrose, took the class and quit drinking. Her blog is “taking a new path“. She has chosen the following posts of hers as what helped her the most.

• why the idea of Wolfie is working for me
• “What do we say to the god of wine?” “Not today.”
• if there was a scan for alcohol dependency
• Wolfie – the original snake oil salesman?
• nothing as tedious as other people’s dreams

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